It's those Lizards again

Coming soon to TV again is another television series from the eighties that was like most that have been recently revamped for today's TV viewing audiences, but as till will it succeed unlike it's other revamped eighties counterparts that have failed lately remains to be seen. Back in the eighties there were a slew of shows that had good premises & some that didn't, but still a series was born from those said premises either way like the A-team,

which starred Mr. T who later had a movie with Sylvester Stallone called Rocky III, where he played a boxer named Clubber Lang.

There was a show called Knight Rider back in the eighties that starred "America's got talent judge David Hasselhoff" as Micheal Knight that had the help of a talking car named K.I.T.T. which stood for (Knight Industry Two Thousand) that helped him solve crimes committed by those who thought they were above the law.
And then there was that show about a certain orange stock racing car with the confederate flag of the south with two country boys known as Bo & Luke Duke, of The Dukes of Hazzard. Dukes of Hazzard may seem like it doesn't count in the sense of a television remake here but I say that trying to make it into a movie which they did in 2006, still does to me say remake none the less. The eighties show that I'm talking about is a little diddy named V was created by Ken Johnson who also created hits like the Six Million dollar man, Bionic woman, and of course Marvel comics The Incredible Hulk in the seventies. V was the story of human kind fighting for survival against aliens who were trying to enforce fascist rule over the whole globe. The Visitors came in fifty spaceships , each three miles across, hovering ominously over earth cities. The Visitors said they came in peace & offered help with medicine from there home planet Sirus. They said they needed resources from our planet to make a chemical for theirs was all they wanted in return. It turned out the chemical that the Visitors were making turned out to be a smokescreen, while they started taking people to the mother ships when news camera man Micheal Donovan found out their true Identities, which was that the Visitors weren't who they appeared to be at all they were in fact reptiles. The Visitors were wanting the tape that Donovan made before he could get it to any broadcasting news outlets. Donovan hid his tape till he ran into Julie parish a leader of renegade scientists who was trying to form a resistance against the Visitors, while the Visitor fooled earthlings with it chemical needed for their home planet they were taking scientists because any scientist could easily find out their hidden secret before anyone else knew what was to come. One line of dialogue of when the mother ships are landing all over the planet from Julie is "I'd loved to get into their DNA!" When the whole town of where Donovan's wife & child live is invaded by the Visitors Donovan only finds his son's friend Josh in hiding in their home. The formed resistance tries to gather medical supplies & weapons from a Visitors seized research facility, only to have one of their own betray them by telling the Visitors where the resistance is hiding. After the resistance camp is in utter ruins they attempt to send out a message to get help in fighting the Visitors by sending a call out to space in hope of finding some help but do realize that they maybe on their own in this fight. V came out the same summer that the last of the original Star Wars films titled "Return of the Jedi" did in 1983. It was the success of the model making for the ships in Star Wars that helped Ken Johnson in his models of the mother ships the Visitors came to earth in, I'm just guessing about that of course?
A year after V came out which left us wondering how could we fight these aliens?, came V the final battle it opens with Donovan dreaming of getting his son Sean off of a mother ship of the Visitors. The resistance had found a Visitor processing food plant where humans were put into cyro status for the Visitors to eat on their home planet & attempted to shut it down. V the final battle was six hours long and broken up over three nights when it originally aired on NBC in May of 1984. The resistance tried to gather more weapons & supplies since the Visitors last raid since the end of the V miniseries from again a Visitor controlled facility this one a hospital in downtown Los Angeles
The resistance team that tries break into the hospital gives a Visitor recruited teenager some drugs to let them through the gates of Visitor guards.
While getting those weapons & supplies they find out that the Visitors are going to be broadcasting on live TV from the medical center itself, but they also find out you need a very special type of security pass card to get in, so Donovan knows that his mother has a very special type of security pas card and sneaks into her house to get it so that the resistance can make copies of the key to get into the Visitors live broadcast at the medical center. And Expose their true identities to the whole planet & show everyone how easily that the average person can fight back if anybody choose too, one other thing Donovan does to make sure that this does indeed happen without the Visitors interrupting what the resistance is doing is he ask a leader of a inside revolt of the Visitors fifth column named Martin for help in keeping the broadcast signal on the air from the main mother ship. The easy part was getting the fake very special security passes to work at the medical center lecture, now came the hard part showing the whole world what the Visitors really were. Here's the dialogue for these three photos where Julie Parrish rips off the Visitor's spoke man or Spoke Lizard face on live TV. "The Visitors are not our friends, they've come to rape our planet and kill us!, They are not who they appear to be!"

Everyone of the resistance gets away from the Visitors live TV feed with the help of Martin and those within the Visitors whom comprise the fifth column, except for Julie Parrish their leader who is caught by Lizard queen Diana. So then it's on to hour number two of the final battle where we see Diana's conversion of Julie working very slowly because of Julie's very strong will. We are introduce to new resistance fighters Ham Tyler & Chris Farbers It seems that Donovan & Tyler have a rift between them since when both were in Vietnam these invaders is what eventually brings them together or at least for a time being, Donovan insist on rescuing Julie from the mother ship to have a stable direction for leadership in the resistance. Once they do rescue her they plan to deal with taking care of getting the water back, which the Visitors store in huge tanks on their ships. The resistance attacks a water plant in down town Los Angeles where there a Visitor mother ship, is filling it's water tanks by being hooked right into the plant's water main. The resistance has these very delicate type of bombs that go off at a certain Celsius of water temperature, but they also have a very small window in which to plant them because the Visitors have a trap that will fry any living thing. That they have to take into account as well, so timing will be everything while operation to get planet's water back takes place.

The Visitors still had Donovan's son Sean & were willing to trade him for his father so an exchange was made. Meanwhile back at the resistance hideout, Robin Maxwell who back in V was used as a experiment by Diana in seeing how human relationships transpire or can transpire had someone Robin had come to like of the Visitors named Brain impregnate her, and now the baby offspring was coming. There was a surprise for all in the resistance especially the new mother when she starting contracting a second time the results were rather horrifying to say the least. So ends the second hour of V: The Final Battle. The third hour opens with the resistance finding out that the whole reptile child of Robin Maxwell is not healthy at all because of it's certain immune system is breaking down because it can't adapt to bacteria particularly E-coli, So Robin's father Robert & Julie start to come up with a way to devise a plan to make a type of defense bacteria Visitors can't fight against. It is called Red Dust. Donovan with Martin's help escapes from the mother ship by free falling back to earth, once on the ground he finds the resistance as he and Julie & his son Sean are reunited. For fear of what may become of Elizabeth the other child of Robin Maxwell who is known as the star child, from harm of the resistance plans father Andrew Doyle takes her to the only safe place he can think of. Which turns out to be the Visitor ship hovering over Los Angeles in the safe keeping of her own people. Julie finds out during resistance planning against the Visitors the Donovan's son Sean maybe a plant by the Visitors themselves to learn of things & report back to them someway. She tries tell Donovan herself face to face, that his son could be possibly converted, when he won't listen to her she gets the message through by way of Tlyer. Elizabeth the star child tries to get Diana to see "Preta-Ma-Na maybe acceptable" but of course Diana tells the star child "It's not their destiny!"
"Preta-Ma-Na" by the way means peace in the Visitors own language for those who maybe wanting a tad bit of trivia from the original V saga before jumping into the new V show on ABC. Now on with how the V the final battle started to come to an end, Martin warns Donovan that Diana plans to use the mother ship as a Doomsday device if the resistance doesn't put a halt to their plans to stop the Visitors.
The Resistance decides whether to let the Visitors do as they will or fight back in a secret vote. The Resistance decides to not let the earth become a tin can that the Visitors just throw away in the garbage of outer space. Martin and the fifth column were now siding with the resistance, since the resistance was still intent on using the Red Dust which Julie herself found out that it wasn't harmful to humans she developed a pill that would always counteract the effects of the Red Dust if you were a Visitor. Martin and the fifth column took these to help the resistance in it's final hope of ridding the planet earth of the evil Diana & her vile followers. The fifth column had the Visitors thinking that the resistance was filling air force jets with the toxic Red Dust, when in reality the resistance was launching the Red Dust in hot air balloons. While the resistance & the fifth column were spreading the toxic Red Dust around the main mother ship over Los Angeles Diana uses the Doomsday device on the ship, turning it into a nuclear bomb. Martin tries to stop it but can't , their only hope is the star child who uses her strange powers to turn off the Doomsday device. Diana uses her influence of Julie from when she converted her to place doubt in her mind & allowed Diana to get away in a Visitor shuttle back to earth. So end V the final battle. It was followed by a weekly TV series simply called V. Which ran for nineteen episodes & had peace at last with an late teen aged Elizabeth making peace with the Visitors unseen leader on the Visitors home world.
Here is the end of the weekly series opening ending for the start of V the series.

While I was finding the images for V & V the final battle to put this blog about the original story together to hype up ABC's new version of the show, I found out some very interesting things for sure. One of those things was that I found out was that Ken Johnson only took a writing credit in V the final battle, but he had intended for there to be a third miniseries of some sort. It was apparent that the studio executives at Warner Brothers felt that V had ran it's course so that's why they opted for a TV series instead. V & V the final battle had some big stars from big movies now. They had Mr. Futterman from 1984's Gremlins his name is Dick Miller, Marc Singer from the late seventies movie that was a take off of Conan the Barbarian & Conan the Destroyer which starred California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger called the Beast Master. Then from V the final battle & the tv series was star Micheal Ironside, whose films include such sleeper type of hits like Total Recall & Starship troopers, and finally the biggest star from the V series is Robert Englund whose that you say?, well he played Nightmare on elm street I myself do wonder what that third miniseries would have consisted of luckily for me and other fans of V can be assured Ken's still very much involved with his own baby even though he won't have part in this new version at all. A couple of years ago he wrote a book called which I will pick up from at Barnes & Noble some time this week (Oct nineteenth through Oct twenty third of 2009) I want to be as psyched as all get out for November third when the new V premiers. I went to Barnes & Nobles and wasn't lucky at all of finding the above titled book on October twenty first, but they will order it in the coming week which ends with Halloween which will mean I 'll have to devour it fast to beat the premier date of the new version. I didn't leave empty handed though I got a copy of the V miniseries by Ken Johnson & AC Crispin, so I'll be "V"fied for sure no matter what? In fact to really get ready for it I'm going watch both V & V the final battle the weekend just before. In fact do you think I would leave talking about V or it's new version without a little tease of the promo. Perish forbid the very thought.... Just follow this link to see the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ddnHWIhfvI

Oh and you can bet without a doubt I'll be posting a review of that pilot episode as soon as I can...